The Business of Marathon Training

The sun is just starting to turn the Colorado foothills pink as they arrive—the mom hoping to turn around a family history of poor health, the recently naturalized American citizen who wants to show her daughters what determination looks like, the empty-nester seeking reinvention—for the start of their six-mile run. "Are we ready to do this?" asks Andrew Johnston, displaying startling cheerfulness for a chilly Saturday morning. "Just think of it as out three miles and then back to your car."

This mismatched crew of 11 is not your typical marathon-training group: They are classmates earning college credit in business via Change Through Challenge, a program now in its third semester at Red Rocks Community College outside Denver. For 21 weeks, students, many of whom have never run before, meet twice a week—Monday nights in a classroom, Saturday mornings on a running trail—to learn about goal setting, setbacks, perseverance, and ultimately, the triumph of completion. The final exam: the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in Phoenix on January 19.

The idea was hatched in 2011 by Johnston, a 44-year-old marathoner and member of the business faculty at the small two-year college, who recognized that the lessons of distance running are interchangeable with those of business. "Starting a business is a big goal that often requires the creation of a detailed, written, and time-denominated business plan that breaks it down into small weekly tasks to achieve the goal," he says. "That's identical to a marathon-training plan." Persistence and dedication don't apply only to distance running; those traits are also assets when launching a business, managing employees, or looking for a job in a sluggish economy.

Johnston knows the latter only too well. In April 2009, the married father of three was laid off from his job as an executive recruiter, a blow that shattered his well-ordered world. His savings vanished. He nearly lost his house. He needed a new plan. He pestered every college in the Denver metro area until finally, in the spring of 2010, Red Rocks offered him a class to teach: Principles of Accounting. Soon he was given more classes and started climbing the ladder in academia; he is now an associate dean.

But something troubled him: Too many of his students didn't graduate. Current statistics show that less than half of all students who start a two-year college program will finish with a degree, and only 10 percent of people who start a business will still be doing it five years later. "They lacked life skills, like setting goals and working through challenges," Johnston says. He remembered how running gave him a sense of accomplishment and helped heal his psychic wounds when he was unemployed. Could running help his students?

The school gave him a chance to find out: In January 2013, the college offered a semester-long marathon-training course through the business department. Twenty students enrolled, and in June, 14 of them completed Colorado's Estes Park Marathon. (Injuries and scheduling issues forced the others to do shorter events.)

Mandy Machan, a 29-year-old cosmetologist from Lakewood, Colorado, was in that first class. The dream of opening her own salon pushed her into the Red Rocks business program in 2012. "I got to this point in my life where I was stuck and needed more, but didn't know what or how," she says. She had already taken two accounting courses with Johnston when he told her about the marathon-training elective. With her new salon about to open, the idea of taking on a marathon seemed crazy to Machan, who had never run for more than 10 minutes. But the timing couldn't have been better. What Machan would learn about running turned out to be not so different from the seemingly constant setbacks of small business ownership: the long hours, the uphill climb against naysayers, the obstacles in her path like loan rejections, city-code requirements, and plumbing disasters. "I had a lot of aha moments," she says, remembering how a training run or classroom lecture helped her deal with her struggles at the salon. "I learned that a little bit plus a little bit equals a lot."

For Carmen Lucero, 34, a single mother in Lakewood, Colorado, the class has taught her to face her fears. She came to this country in 2004 and earned citizenship five years later. But along the way she separated from her husband and suffered severe depression. She started college in 2006 but quit. Now she is back, hoping to earn a business degree. Once a skeptical nonrunner, she now runs three times a week plus the training runs. "I am learning to do things I didn't think I could," she says. "In your worst moment you see how strong you can be."

At the training run, the students begin to straggle back into the parking lot. Johnston is there grinning, throwing out high fives and fist bumps. He feels their success as if it's his own. And maybe it is.

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